Tuesday, January 22, 2008

May too Liberal with her punctuation

Harper never used Keen’s given name, nor the word “waiting” in the Commons

Taking a break from her rantings about Adolf Hitler, Green Party supremo Elizabeth May turns to another old lib-left chestnut, Stephen Harper’s supposed sexism. Unfortunately, she relied upon some invented facts to make her case:

And now I turn to an unexamined aspect of the Harper abuse: sexism. The ways he spit out the name “Linda Keen” day after day in Question Period, suggested he felt he could make hay out of the fact the President of the CNSC was a woman. If CNSC member Dr. Christopher Barnes, with both an Order of Canada and membership in the Royal Society of Canada, had been its President, I simply cannot imagine the Prime Minister rounding on Michael Ignatieff, as he did in the House, demanding if he was prepared to wait for “Dr. Christopher Barnes” with the scorn in his voice he emoted for “waiting for Ms. Keen!”.--Elizabeth May, guest-posting at Scott’s DiaTribes, January 21, 2008

Just for a lark, I checked Hansard. Harper referred to Keen by name a grand total of five times: once on December 12, and four times on December 13. On every occasion, he referred to her as “Ms. Keen,” not “Linda Keen.”

And he never used the word “waiting” in reference to her in the Commons. In fact, if you search the entire Parliament site for the phrase “waiting for Ms. Keen” you get 0 results.

Well, as some say, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Or perhaps May just doesn’t understand what quotation marks mean.

I checked the video too. You can view the December 12 clip here (Harper starts at about 21:00) and the December 13 clip here (Harper starts at about 04:19:30). I guess if May wants to describe Harper as spitting that's her prerogative, but he struck me as more bewildered and bemused at the Liberals' flip-flopping.

4 comments:

The ‘mis-spoken’ quotes are certainly bad enough. But May’s attempt at painting Harper as some misogynistic red-neck is quite a crude (not to mention silly) smear attempt. It’s pretty much common knowledge that Keen is a woman, so May suggesting anyone with even half a clue would attempt to be “making hay” out of that fact is loony to begin with.

But, as you say, why let facts and common sense get in the way of a good smear.

Ya gotta wonder what’s rattling around loose in some of these people’s heads - especially the heads of those who want to be Prime Minister.

Canada admits over 200 000 immigrants a year. How many terrorists or extremists would be among them. We're always told it's only a small percentage. Well, 1% would be a very small percentage and that means 2000 dangerous radicals a year. Do you think that will make us safer or less safe? Canadian authorities can barely keep up with the thousands of radicals who are already here and have ties to all kinds of foreign terrorist groups. Do you think their job will be easier if we bring in 200 000 more people every year, mostly from countries that are plagued by terrorism? Do you think there is economic benefit from bringing in thousands of people with no knowledge of English or French?

Canada does not need immigration at this point although it used to. You should feel free to question the motives of any politician who says we do. Are they looking for votes in the large cities? Are they looking for bribes from immigration lawyers or self-styled multicultural leaders? There is no skills shortage that cannot be fixed by retraining Canadians who've lost jobs in fishing, forestry, mining, farming or manufacturing. It doesn't matter if Canada is aging slightly. If the average Canadian was 85 years old, we'd still be better off than the countries that supply most of the immigrants. The damage that can be done by foreign radicals in one day is a lot greater than any possible economic benefit.

Do you think that Canada is enriched by multiculturalism? Think about the cultures that exist in the source countries. Countries where women are second class citizens at best and where homosexuals are ruthlessly persecuted. Countries that are plagued by corruption which causes poverty. Countries where inter-tribal hatred and inter-religious hatred is a way of life. Is that what you want Canada to be like? You better think about it because that's what those cultures produce. They produce places that people want to leave. There's more to culture than interesting food and lively dancing. A country doesn't become a living hell by accident.

It's going to take years to sort ourselves out from the past 15-20 years of mass immigration. There has to be NO NEW IMMIGRATION while we're doing it.

If you want Canada to remain a great place to live, then pass this message on to your friends and family. You can also find the address of your MP through the parliamentary website, www.parl.gc.ca

Useful websites about the present-day dangers of immigration include:www.ImmigrationWatchCanada.org www.jihadwatch.orgwww.vdare.com